AI is quickly becoming part of everyday eCommerce, whether store owners are actively seeking it out or simply finding it added to the platforms and tools they already use. The real question is no longer whether you should use AI, but where it actually helps and where it can create more problems than it solves.
Used properly, AI can save time, uncover useful info, and take on a lot of repetitive work that wastes your time. Used incorrectly, it can publish bad information, mishandle customer data, or make decisions that should have been made by a human.
Here are five things eCommerce store owners should be using AI for right now, and five things they probably should not.
1. DO Use AI to Analyze Your Store Data
Most eCommerce stores have more data than anyone has time to review, so most of the time all that intelligence goes to waste. AI can help make sense of sales reports, product performance, search data, returns, conversion rates, inventory levels, and customer behavior by letting you ask questions in plain English instead of digging through endless dashboards.
That makes it useful for spotting things like products getting traffic but not converting, categories with unusually high returns, items frequently purchased together, or products that are selling way faster than expected. AI can point out the problem or opportunity, but the decision about what to do next should still be yours.
2. DO Use AI for First Drafts
AI is great for creating first drafts of product descriptions, emails, FAQs, category copy, blog outlines, social posts, ad copy, and customer service responses.
The key here is first draft. AI can save you from writers block and can speed up content creation, but somebody should still check the final version for accuracy, tone, and common sense before it goes live.
3. DO Use AI to Improve Product Data
As AI-powered shopping and product discovery become more common, detailed and accurate product information is becoming even more important, especially as we move into the busy holiday season. AI can help identify missing attributes, clean up product data, extract specifications from descriptions, standardize naming, and improve categorization.
That may not sound like the most important thing you want too put on your to-do list, but detailed and accurate product data can make it easier for search engines, shopping tools, and AI assistants to understand what you sell and when your products are relevant to a shopper.
4. DO Use AI to Assist Customer Service
AI can help customer service teams find answers faster, summarize emails, locate store policies, suggest answers, and suggest relevant product or order information.
The goal should be to make your staff more efficient, not to replace them with a chatbot that never seems to solve the problem. Customers care about getting a fast, accurate answer, not whether AI helped generate it.
5. DO Use AI to Find Problems and Opportunities
One of the best uses of AI is finding things that are easy to miss. It can flag products with falling conversion rates, unusually high return rates, repetitive customer questions, unusual search activity, or even items that are often bought together but are never part of your cross-sell strategy.
Think of AI as someone who taps you on the shoulder and says, “You may want to have a look at this,” rather than someone you put in charge to run your entire online operation.
5 Things You Should NOT Be Letting AI Do
Before getting into the list, there is one very visible warning sign already showing up everywhere – businesses are starting to let AI replace originality. You have probably seen the same AI generated image used for a storewide sale, a fire company chicken dinner, a school fundraiser, someone selling cookies, and just about every other promotion imaginable.
AI image generation can absolutely be useful, but when everyone gives it roughly the same prompt, everything starts looking the same. Your marketing still needs to look and feel like your business, not like it came from the same giant pile of generic AI artwork everybody else is using.
1. DON’T Let AI Publish Important Information Without Review
AI should not be publishing pricing, product specs, guarantees, safety information, compatibility details, shipping policies, or other important information without someone checking it first.
It can sound like an overly confident teen while being completely wrong, and the more important the information is, the more expensive that mistake can become.
2. DON’T Use AI to Create Fake Reviews or Testimonials
Do not use AI to invent customer reviews, testimonials, or fictional success stories.
AI can help summarize real feedback and identify common themes, but manufacturing fake customer experiences is deceptive and can create more problems that you probably don’t even want to get into.
3. DON’T Give AI Unlimited Control Over Refunds or Discounts
AI can help recommend when a refund, credit, or discount makes sense, but there should always be limits that you sent and guidelines for approvals.
You do not want an automated system deciding on its own to issue large refunds or discount half your store because it thinks that will improve conversions.
4. DON’T Feed Sensitive Information Into Random AI Tools
Customer information, supplier pricing, contracts, financial data, API keys, and internal business information should never be put into whatever AI tool someone happens to be using.
Before giving an AI platform access to sensitive information, make sure you understand how that data is stored, used, and protected.
5. DON’T Let AI Make the Final Business Decision
AI can analyze data, spot patterns, and make suggestions, but it doesn’t know everything you know about your business – and it never will!
A lower-margin product that you use to attract new customers sells well and meets your acquisition goals, but AI tells you to increase the price 75%. A poor-performing category may be flagged for removal by AI, but AI doesn’t know that category and its associated items exist because of contractual obligations with a supplier in order to carry their more popular, best selling items.
Use AI to help inform the decision, not make the decision for you.
For most eCommerce stores, the best AI strategy is not the flashiest one. Start by unloading repetitive work, trying it for data analysis, content drafts, catalog cleanup, and customer service assistance. In other words, let AI do the busywork while people continue to make the decisions that actually matter.
Scott Sanfilippo began his eCommerce journey in 1994 by co-founding one of the Internet’s first online retailers, TheFerretStore.com, which was acquired by PetCo in 2006. In 2001, he co-founded the eCommerce design and marketing firm Solid Cactus, which was acquired by web.com in 2009. Today, Scott is the General Manager of Your Store Wizards and lives in Delray Beach, FL. Scott can be contacted at scott@yourstorewizards.com.